One of my favorite Canadian writers is Margaret Atwood. You may remember her because she wrote the novel “A Handmaid’s Tale” which was made into an award winning film. In April of 2003, Margaret Atwood wrote a “Letter to America” which appeared in The Nation. I offer you a short excerpt:

“Dear America: This is a difficult letter to write, because I'm no longer sure who you are. Some of you may be having the same trouble. I thought I knew you: … You were …. The comic books I read in the late 1940s. You were the radio shows …. You were the music I sang and danced to ……You wrote some of my favorite books…… You stood up for freedom, honesty and justice; you protected the innocent. I believed most of that. I think you did, too….

We've always been close, you and us. History… has twisted us together since the early seventeenth century. Some of us used to be you; some of us want to be you; some of you used to be us … you are … our blood relations…. But although we've had a ringside seat, we've never understood you completely, up here north of the 49th parallel. We're like Romanized Gauls--look like Romans, dress like Romans, but aren't Romans--peering over the wall at the real Romans… “What are they doing? What are they doing now?” (April 14, 2003)

Like Margaret Atwood, I am one of those Romanized Gauls. I look like you, dress like you, and more and more I even talk like you. I grew up watching American TV. As a teenager I fell in love with your Hollywood stars. As a student, I read your literature and history. As an adult, I have joined the many Canadians who live and work south of the border. I bring with me a long Canadian tradition of looking over that wall at the Real Romans and asking, “What are they doing? What are they doing now?” There is a very good reason for that. Pierre Elliot Trudeau, one of our most beloved prime ministers, said to an American audience in a speech to the National Press Club in 1969, "Living next to you is like sleeping with an elephant; no matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt." Because of Canada’s vulnerability to the most powerful nation in the world, we can’t afford NOT to pay attention to what happens here.

One of the things that most confounds Canadians is the strange relationship of religion and politics. Canada is such a secular nation. Just to give you an example. In Canada, you lose status when you go to church. Many people will not tell their neighbors for fear of losing their esteem. Here, you gain status when you go to church. We’re not used to hearing politicians talk about their faith, or using religion as the basis to shape public policy, and when they try, as some are, it leaves many of us confused and uncomfortable. But here, religion is an undeniable part of public life and I am amazed at the political power it has.

I’ve lived here for almost three years now, and have had to go through many cultural adjustments. And one thing I have found most challenging is this relationship between religion and politics. What I find particularly challenging is the kind of religion I see in the public sphere. When politicians say “I’m a person of faith” they are often referring to a package of moral values that are implicitly understood to be “religious”, often including a traditional definition of marriage, being pro-life, having a tough stance on the war on terror and border security, and a tough love approach to social programs. Furthermore, those moral values have become associated with one political party. There is the assertion that the partisan divide of Republican/Democrat reflects a divide between people of faith and the godless. This means that the political arena has become, for some, a religious battlefield with cosmic consequences.

While all this is going on, there has been a dearth of religious voices that promote traditionally liberal moral values. Now although there is no consensus amongst religious liberals about those values, they are often a combination of some of the following: environmental justice, women’s rights, racial equality, gay rights, economic justice, corporate responsibility, and peace. Having no liberal religious voices in the public sphere identifying these issues as moral issues feeds the assumptions many make about what it means to be religious. However, that vacuum is starting to fill. Progressive Christians who are United Methodist, United Church of Christ, Congregationalist, Mennonite, Quaker, Disciples of Christ, Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, old school Southern Baptist, and others like Reform Jews and Unitarian Universalists, have taken a look at the political might of the religious right and have made the decision to meet it face to face. While there is no unanimous agreement between them or even within them about what their moral values are, there is general agreement that there need to be more religious options in the public realm. There is more than one way to be religious.

As someone who considers herself a religious progressive, this development has brought music to my ears, and I think it has been welcomed by many others, perhaps some of you. It would be fair to say that for many of us, we have felt the impact of a conservative religious agenda as a form of spiritual and cultural violence, and there is hope that by bringing a kinder and more compassionate religious voice to the public realm, that some of that violence will end.

But our involvement in the political sphere has also raised some uncomfortable questions. In the face of the incredible success of religious conservatives in influencing the political sphere, have religious progressives been forced to play copycat? As religious conservatives seek to sway the Republican Party, will some religious progressives seek the same power in the Democratic Party? As religious liberals seek to gain a political voice, there is a danger that we will heighten partisanship by identifying our issues with the Democratic Party. We live in a country committed to the separation of church and state. Some have argued that religious conservatives are breaching that historical foundation. In seeking to counter their voice, are religious progressives in danger of helping to widen the gap?

The big question here, the real question here, is what is the appropriate relationship between religion and politics? The answer depends on what you understand as religion. What is the function of religion? How does it serve us? What does it ask of us? How does it ask us to be in the world?

These are not easy questions for Unitarian Universalists to answer, because for many of us it has been a challenge to identify as religious people. Especially in the Bible Belt, where religion is often associated with oppression and narrow-mindedness, many Unitarian Universalists sought to distance themselves from being religious. To some degree this has worked. It helped us to distinguish ourselves from those around us. It helped us protect our unique identity. It kept us from being confused with forms of religion that we disagreed with. It helped provide a haven for many damaged by more traditional religions.

But there was also a price to be paid. It helped those who wished to marginalize us. It weakened our ability to stand as a strong progressive religious option. When you withdraw too much from the prevailing culture around you, you limit your ability to reach out and connect with your community. When we shied away from identifying as religious, in a place where religion and religious language is powerful and prevalent, we ceased to be a player and became quite invisible. As the religious right gained in power, we often found ourselves personally and institutionally unprepared and unable to meet the challenge. We have had to catch up from behind, as it were.

And so I ask you, what might it mean to be religious as a Unitarian Universalist? What does it mean for us to be people of faith? A esteemed colleague of mine, Rev. Bonnie Vegiard shared with me recently her understanding of the five tasks of religion, and I think there is much to learn from her ideas about what it means to be religious Unitarian Universalists.

First, to be religious means being open to healing. We acknowledge that this can be a hurtful world and that all of us are, in some way, broken. And by broken I do not mean sinful. The unfolding of life itself can break us, in small and large ways. A religious person acknowledges that brokenness in themselves, and is open to healing.

Secondly, to be religious means to search for inspiration in everyday life. Although this is a broken world, it is also a beautiful world, where truth shines in every corner. A religious person finds the holy in everyday life and in everyday situations. Every moment is an opportunity to live fully within that wonderful and mysterious creation.

Thirdly, to be religious means asking big questions. It does not mean accepting simple answers because life is not simple. What is truth? Why am I here? What is evil? What is justice? What is peace? What does it mean to love one another? Being religious means asking the big questions and being open to the answers, even if those answers are elusive and changing.

Fourthly, to be religious means making ourselves better people. When we dare to heal, when we find the sacred in all of life, when we ask the big questions, we are asking ourselves to change. We are questioning our beliefs and values, transforming our way of being, our way of loving, our way of living.

And finally, to be religious means making the world a better place. When we experience the transformational promise of our living religion, we are called to carry that promise to the world, that same broken and beautiful world that sent us into our healing, into our questions, and ultimately, sent us into the holy.

Each of these five aspects of the religious life – healing, inspiration, asking questions, making ourselves better people, and making the world a better place – each of these calls us to stretch. Stretch inward into our selves, stretch upwards to whatever it is we consider most holy, and stretch outward to the world in its beauty and its brokenness. To be a religious Unitarian Universalist means stretching. It is a profoundly expansive way of engaging life because when you stretch, eventually, you stretch beyond yourself and life is no longer just about you. The journey may begin by being about you, but when we are truly committed to a religious path, life becomes about much more than us. Life becomes about service.

So what does this have to do with politics? Religion is not just something that happens in our private selves. The very nature of religion stretches us out of ourselves and into the world so that we may embrace it fully and serve it faithfully. The practice of religion culminates in a commitment to bettering the world, and that makes religion profoundly political because both religion and politics engage the delicate art of negotiating human relationships for the common good of all. Both are supposed to be about bettering our world.

The issue is not whether to be religious and political, the issue is how to be religious and political. As I was preparing for this Sunday, I read the following on the website of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: “The United States has a long tradition of separating church from state, but an equally powerful inclination to mix religion and politics. Throughout our nation's history, great political and social movements – from abolition to women's suffrage to civil rights to today's struggles over abortion and gay marriage – have drawn upon religious institutions for moral authority, inspirational leadership and organizational muscle. But for the past generation, religion has been woven more deeply into the fabric of partisan politics than ever before.”**

I think this is the problem we are struggling with. The weaving of religion into partisan politics endangers the separation of church and state. When you look at what it means to be a religious person, what it means to practice religion, this lure of partisanship is a profound abuse of religion, for religion is about healing, it is about being better people, bringing us together and taking care of one another. It is not about dividing us from one another. So much of what we see today is religion as the slave of power and pride, and so the wounding continues. And the wounding is happening to both religion and politics. When the Republican party allowed itself to become the party of religious conservatives, it alienated many, including many religious liberals who were political small c conservatives. Conservatism has become compromised and all of us – liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat are compromised as well.

We do need to speak out. We do need to stand up for what we believe. We do need to trust that inner sense that we have a healing message to offer a broken world. But as we consider what kind of religious voice we want to have in our communities, as we discern how we are to serve our broken world, we should be asking ourselves, over and over, why are we really doing this? Is this about power or is this about people? Is this serving my pride, or is this serving humanity? Are our actions grounded in anger and fear, or are they grounded in love? When we have discerned that our intention is right and true, then it is entirely appropriate to approach those with political power with our vision of a healed world, because their job is not so different from ours. They are here to serve the common good, and we, as religious people, need to reach out to our politicians and hold them to the integrity of their task. And that goes for all of our representatives, Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal. We are united in the task of serving the common good.

In her Letter to America, Margaret Atwood references those powerful words enscribed into the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your poor, give me your tired, give me your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free.” What a beautiful vision and what an awesome task. In this time of religious strife and political uncertainty, let us recommit to that vision.

So be it.

*These five aspects were originally developed by Rev. Bonnie Vegiard as the Five Accomplishments of Religion. Rev. Vegiard is the Program Minister at Eliot Unitarian Universalist Chapel, Kirkwood MO.

** http://pewforum.org/religion-politics/